The new coronavirus pandemic that is ravaging Japan and the rest of the world is a fresh, painfully graphic reminder of the need to recognize the horrible damage an infectious disease can inflict on society.

It also highlights the need to prepare in advance to ensure effective responses to dire situations that could be created by an infectious virus outbreak.

What if a major flood or a powerful earthquake strikes Japan before the outbreak can be contained?

It is horrifying to imagine the devastation, but this possibility demands serious proactive efforts to consider and prepare for tough challenges that would be posed by such disasters.

Particularly worrisome is what could happen at evacuation centers.

Experts say that the transmission of a virus is most likely to occur in a badly ventilated place crowded with people where conversations take place at close distances. Disaster evacuation centers, which are usually facilities such as gyms where many people live closely together, perfectly fit this profile.

Guidelines for operating evacuation centers created by the Cabinet Office cite key requirements for maintaining a healthy environment at these facilities, including appropriate room temperatures, adequate ventilation, compartments to isolate people infected with a virus and regular visits by doctors.

But these measures are basically designed to prevent or contain an outbreak of influenza or a norovirus infection.

More elaborate preparations are needed at such facilities to prevent a major outbreak of a new virus for which there is no established cure.

The top priority should be to keep evacuation centers from becoming overcrowded. The Cabinet Office on April 1 called on local governments to seek cooperation from inns and hotels in an effort to secure more potential evacuation centers in addition to designated facilities.

The instruction was aimed at securing places to accommodate vulnerable evacuees such as elderly people who have fled their homes. It is, however, unclear how much cooperation local governments can obtain from such commercial facilities during emergencies.

It is necessary for local governments to confirm in advance the willingness of candidate facilities to offer rooms for evacuees and conclude special agreements with them. It is also important for prefectural and municipal governments to make cooperative arrangements for emergency evacuations across their borders.

It has long been pointed out that most evacuation centers in Japan tend to become too crowded, leaving extremely small spaces per person and forcing evacuees to live without sufficient privacy. The current crisis should lead to serious efforts to deal with these issues.

One major concern is whether people showing symptoms will receive the necessary care. It is vital to make sure that there will be no patients who have nowhere to go to receive medical treatment when an evacuation order or advisory has been issued.

Shizuoka Prefecture is expected to see some 430,000 local residents flooding evacuation centers within the prefecture in one day when the widely predicted mega-quake along the Nankai Trough off the Pacific coast strikes the nation.

The prefectural government’s contingency plan to respond to such emergencies calls for isolating people infected with a flu or other virus in separate rooms.

Vacant classrooms at schools could be used for this purpose. If their homes are deemed safe, infected people can also be asked to remain at home.

In the wake of the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which struck the Kobe area in January 1995, flu outbreaks at evacuation centers caused many disaster-related deaths.

It is crucial to secure sufficient supplies of soap for washing hands, disinfectant solutions and face masks for all evacuation centers.

At the moment, all local governments are preoccupied with efforts to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. Some have provided masks reserved for emergencies to medical institutions.

They should replenish such used emergency supplies as soon as possible.

The rainy season is drawing near. Last year’s Typhoon No. 19 temporarily forced about 240,000 people in 27 prefectures to take refuge in some 8,200 evacuation centers.

It is impossible to prepare society perfectly for every potential disaster. But it is possible to mitigate possible damage from such disasters by reducing the risks for which society is not prepared.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 6